Attentional processing of neutral and threatening words in the cueing paradigm: Horizontal or vertical presentation?

Authors

Alexandre Williot*, Isabelle Blanchette

Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Groupe de recherche CogNAC (Cognition, Neurosciences, Affect et Comportement), Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada

Abstract

In the cueing paradigm, a target is presented after a cue in the same location (valid condition) or in another location (invalid condition). There is privileged attentional processing for stimuli preceded by a spatial cue. This validity effect is more pronounced for emotional cues than neutral. Across two experiments, we studied differences in the cueing effect when emotional or neutral stimuli were presented on the horizontal (Experiment 1) or the vertical meridian line (Experiment 2). We were interested in examining the impact of emotional and semantic processing strategy on attention, using these two methods of stimulus presentation. The first experiment did not show a significant validity effect when the cue was threatening, and the validity effect was reversed when the cue was neutral. There was also no effect of the processing strategies. In the second experiment, a three-way interaction showed a validity effect when the cue was neutral and the processing strategy emotional, but not in the other condition. From these results, we conclude the validity effect in a cueing paradigm can be more effective with a vertical presentation of stimuli than with a horizontal presentation.

Keywords: cueing paradigm, visual attention, threatening stimuli, vertical presentation, horizontal presentation

PAGES:1-27

doi:10.24193/cbb.2019.23.01

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